Finally Asking Questions

When I stopped just accepting that a life serving God had to be this way

Photo by Ryan McVay from Photo Images on Canva Pro

Note: The story of my faith journey, church trauma, and spiritual abuse is inextricably linked to the stories of my parents and sisters, but this is my story. Their experiences, memories, and hurt are separate from my own and I do not speak for them. Details are also their own and not mine to share, and so I keep the details where they matter only to my own experiences.

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The news reports sent out the warning for days, scaring us enough that my friend Eric and I made sure to leave our Nebraska campus immediately after our Friday afternoon classes got out. We had 600 miles to travel across I-80 before he would be able to drop me off in Southwest Michigan; he would have at least one more hour of travel after that.

We stopped at at least one rest area on the way and looked at the weather map. A mass of blue was following us across the Midwest. We didn’t have cell phones to tell us that we were in a race against time, but the few weather reports made it perfectly clear: we needed to get home.

After over nine hours of driving, Eric dropped me off in the early Saturday morning hours. By the time I finally woke up on my first official day of my first college spring break, the lake effect snow was mingling with the massive storm that slowly shut down the entire Midwest. I would spend the majority of Spring Break 1998 indoors.

It wasn’t a great college spring break. The boy I was going on dates with but wasn’t dating decided to officially date someone else. When I could finally leave the house, I was stuck processing a break-up that wasn’t a break-up with the friends who had introduced us to each other in the first place. Then right before I returned to school, my mom wanted to have a serious conversation with me.

With everything going on, I didn’t know what she would want to talk about. She never liked the boy I wasn’t officially dating but she knew I was heartbroken. And I was having a pretty good academic year, so I couldn’t imagine that it was school related.

It was about my dad’s job. During the year that I had been away at college, the situation at the church that we had left Wyoming for had quickly deteriorated. There were complaints about his leadership as both principal and Director of Christian Education. There were unhappy parents and teachers and members of the congregation were making moves to get rid of him. Once again, my dad would be losing a ministry position that he had desperately wanted. Only this time, I hadn’t been around to witness most of it.

“Don’t tell your sisters, yet. We’re waiting to see where this goes.”

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When We Left the Mountains Behind

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My mom had just dropped a bombshell revelation in my lap and she wanted me to keep it a secret. She figured I was heading back to school and the secret would be safe for now. I had to return to school with the knowledge that the world at home was coming apart at the seams and my sisters didn’t know everything that was going on.

Except that was probably bullshit. Kids know. They always know. They just might not know all of the details.

My mom wanted me to pray with her on the couch. She wanted me to pray with her for a positive resolution to the situation. She wanted to know that she wasn’t praying alone.

Except my heart and my head were reeling from the revelations. I numbly sat there and allowed her to believe that she had my spiritual support, while inside I was screaming “why?”